The Hollies – The Air That I Breathe vs. Radiohead Creep

August 7, 2016

On my bike ride today I was listening to k. d. lang’s anthology Retrospective in anticipation of the case/lang/veirs concert I will be seeing this week. “The Air That I Breathe” came on and my first reaction was that this must be a Radiohead cover. But as the chorus came a round the second time I said to myself this is an oldie – I have heard this song before and it was not Radiohead. Sure enough I searched Spotify and it was a 1974 hit by The Hollies. I am not the first to make this discovery – the songwriters Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood successfully sued Radiohead and reissues of Pablo Honey now credit Hammond and Hazlewood as co-writers of “Creep” and Hammond and Hazlewood split royalties with the band. No wonder Radiohead never plays “Creep.”